Yesterday India launched a spacecraft to Mars which is due to arrive at the Red Planet on the 24th September next year. The project is said to have cost £45m, and is in my mind a total waste of money when an estimated 25 million people are starving to death, with around 3,000 children dying every day. It is mind-boggling how callous some governments can be in the face of such hardship.

Last year the UK government gave £280m in aid to the Indian government, and apart from the £45m spent on the launch, the entire space project has cost somewhere in the region of £600m in total, and all the while their poor, and in particular children, starve to death. Britain has been giving the Indian government money in aid for decades, and you have to ask what they spent it on. Certainly nor relieving the suffering of the poor and malnourished.

First Shipment Of India’s Poor To Mars

Apart from being among the first nations to send a space vehicle to Mars, what does the Indian government hope to achieve? Perhaps once they have spied out the planet they intend to ship all their starving population there as the first astronauts to Mars! Otherwise, apart from the ‘prestige’ of being one of the first there I fail to see what they have to gain. When it comes down to it, what does any country have to gain by sending these craft to Mars. In my view, nothing!

What with the poisonous atmosphere, and the extreme dangers of the 10 month journey, I doubt very much if man will ever colonize the planet because life there is unsustainable in the long term. With our current state of knowledge on space travel there is no way anyone who goes will ever get back to Earth.

A Poor Family

But this detracts from the main problem of how money is spent in India. I fail to see what such a venture will do for the people of India, no matter what the aspirations are of the government. The country is split down the middle with the wealthy and the poor, and what is sad is that the wealthy seem to feel no compunction to help the poor.

The poor are the poor, and every society on the planet has them, and they are often that way because of one major thing, a lack of education. This factor allows people to get jobs, climb the ladder into higher paid jobs, and develop into useful members of society, but because the poor never get this chance they remain trapped, and usually end up starving in the streets. On top of that is drought in many areas of India that have decimated crops necessary to feed those who have nothing. The rich have no problem putting food on the table, and in fact this is often at the expense of the poor.

Corruption in India

In August 2012 the massive theft of $14.75 billion worth of food over the last decade was uncovered. Politicians and criminal syndicates systematically looted food stocks destined for the starving people of the Uttar Pradesh region. Not a single person has been arrested for this massive crime because all those that could do something about it are corrupt themselves, and so the poor and children continue to die.

It makes you wonder how the British government among others can be so blind as to continually send aid money to this country when all it does is pay for the space programme, their nuclear arsenal, and go into the pockets of corrupt government officials and businessmen. Thankfully, the British government has finally seen the light, and all aid payments to India will stop as from 2015. That donation will go a long way to helping our own people.

India’s Population Growth

India has the second largest population of any country in the world after China, and it continues to grow day by day. The government know this, but does nothing to curb the runaway birth count by introducing measures to reduce it. If you mention contraceptive to most poor and starving women in the country they don’t even know what it is.

The current population of India is estimated at 1.27 billion, and at its current rate of population increase, in 40 years time it will be 10 billion, which is way more than the total world population of 7 billion in 2013.

A Starving Child In India

China introduced the one child per family policy in 1978 to curb its rampant population growth, which despite being extremely unpopular, has shown results. In India not a single measure has been tried to curb population growth. The government appear to have become so hardened to the plight of the poor that they do not even care if 25 million people die of hunger every year, at least they have a space craft on the way to Mars, and I suppose starvation is a rather grotesque method of population control!

So my message to the government of India is: Stop this ridiculous waste of money and effort, and concentrate on getting help to the poor and starving children. Do something to drastically cut the birthrate by introducing whatever measures are necessary to educate poor people that to churn out babies like rabbits in killing the country, and will eventually destroy mankind.

The Indian government is surely responsible for one of the biggest scandals of modern times. Many of its 1.2 billion people, in particular children under five, are starving to death while food for millions is rotting in open storage areas because the country has run out of storage space.

Left To Rot While People Starve

A new report out today indicates that for nearly a year millions of tons of grain have been left to rot in outdoor storage areas because there is no more proper covered storage space in the country. In just one dump the sacks are piled 15ft high and covering an area the size of a football field.

India’s Disgrace!

India has seen bumper crops for four of the past five years, and production is expected to top 253 million tons this year which means next year will probably see the same thing happening. Meanwhile, millions suffer from mal-nourishment because they have no food, and children under the age of five are dying of hunger.

Personally, I find this a national disgrace in a country that finds it necessary to have nuclear weapons, and has recently put a satellite in orbit while millions of its people starve. It seems that the divide between the have’s and have not’s in India has reached epic proportions and nobody gives a damn!

As Usual It’s All About Money

The government says they have no more space to store the bumper crops because all the warehousing facilities are full, but to me this is not an excuse. This grain could be given, or even sold to the poor at subsidised prices, but this is not done ‘for fiscal reasons’. In other words, distributing the excess grain to the starving means there is no profit in it. Food Minister K.V. Thomas was quoted as saying last thursday that the government was taking “all necessary steps” to increase its storage capacities. This will of course take time, and in the meanwhile people are starving!

Opposition parties and even some members of the government are criticising the situation as a scandal, and so they should. “It is unfortunate that while people are dying of hunger, food grain is rotting in the open. We are confronting a serious food crisis, and the government is indifferent to this colossal waste,” said Sharad Yadav, a key opposition leader.

Indian Prime Minister

The government had been warned of the lack of storage space by the Food Corporation of India, the state-run agency responsible for purchasing grain, but nothing has been done. According to sources, the government was reluctant to allow an increase in grain exports for fear of political protests at a time when the country had been suffering double-digit inflation of food prices for most of the last year, and economists say selling the grain at subsidised prices would expand the fiscal deficit.

Activists have a different view. Biraj Patnaik, an adviser to India’s Supreme Court on food policy issues said: “The rotting of food grain is tantamount to criminal neglect in a country which has one of the highest rates of child malnutrition globally and the largest proportion of hungry people”. He went further by saying, “the government’s refusal to distribute the grain to the poor, holding it back to rot ‘purely on fiscal grounds, is particularly distressing.’. In the meantime, villagers near the rotting stockpiles are scavenging what they can save from the huge mountains of rotten grain.

Saving What They Can

There are people all over the third world who are dying needlessly from lack of food, so instead of letting so much staple food like wheat rot why can’t the government donate it to the UNHCR for example, for I am sure they would find a good use for it and quite probably save many lives.

It is indeed a sad indictment of our times when a government would rather see food rot than distribute it to the starving in their own country because such an action would not generate a profit. God help us all!

In a country that has seen enormous economic growth in the last decade, has nuclear weapons and a space programme, its hard to imagine that 41.6% of its people are reliant on foreign aid to keep them alive.

India´s Economy – Set for 8.5% Growth Per Year

Since 2000, the economic wealth of India has grown to the extent that it is now the ninth largest economy in the world, and fourth largest in terms of purchasing power, and yet many of its children are starving to death.

India first tested a nuclear bomb in 1974 and now has an arsenal of such weapons. Year on year the government is spending billions of dollars to develop, aircraft, aircraft carriers and submarines as a means to deliver them, and yet many of its children are dying of hunger.

Space Programme – More Important Than Children´s Lives?

The country also has an expensive space programme which has put up several satellites, the first being Aryabhata, launched in 1975 aboard a Russian rocket, and yet the children of India are starving to death.

With hardship so widespread in India, some 41.6% of the population are living below the poverty line according to 2005 figures, it is hard to imagine that the country can afford the extravagance of nuclear weapons and a space programme, but such is the mind of governments!

Looking For Scraps

Ever since India joined the free-market economies of the world, it has seen a massive increase in the middle class sector, due for the most part to the country embracing modern technology and providing services to other countries. The destitute have however been left far behind in this growth, for India has more starving people than the whole of Africa. Recent estimates put the number of people below the poverty line in Africa at 410 million, while in India the figure is 645 million. The latest population estimates indicate India has in excess of 1.2 billion inhabitants which makes it the second largest country after China in terms of inhabitants.

Ever since 1947 when India was given independence by the British Parliament, our government, among others, has been pumping aid money into the country to the tune of hundreds of millions of pounds every year. The present government under David Cameron has elected to continue paying £280 million a year until 2015 into the coffers of the Indian government in New Delhi. India has one of the largest food aid programmes in the world.

Ultimately Responsible?

What is now under discussion, is what happens to that money?

This is where the ancient beast corruption raises its head once again. Not surprisingly, it is not only the low level workers that are stealing aid intended for the poorest families, but many government officials who are supposed to oversee distribution.

Desperate For Food

Rations Packs intended for the most needy children are being systematically hi-jacked on route and sold on the black market as, believe it or not, animal feed. In the meantime, the poor, for whom this aid means life or death, are dying from malnutrition to the tune of two million a year. Some 61 million children (48%) in India suffer from stunted growth due to malnutrition.

A Mother and Dying Child

I really have no idea if this is the Indian governments macabre idea of population control, or if it is just plain greed and corruption, but I hope it’s the latter. Whichever way you look at it, many people are getting obscenely rich over the corpses of the country’s young. Also, it seems to me we are doing nothing more than footing the bill for their nuclear and space programmes, for the one thing that seems to be missing is a sense of priorities.

Roy.

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Roy Peters

Welcome to News, Views and Nonsense.

Hi, and welcome!
I can hardly believe this blog is now more than five years old, for it seems like only yesterday when I took my first hesitant steps. A lot has happened in that time, and I must say it has been a great pleasure to write about, and discuss with visitors all the momentous happenings around the world.
Whether you are a frequent visitor, or someone who just dropped by, I hope you will come back, for you are always welcome.

Now that I am a 'Gentleman of Leisure' I have time to indulge in my hobby of writing short stories. I do it for my own pleasure and not for accolades. Although I recently had offers to publish some of them, I found the cost of publication far too much and unfortunately had to decline.
PLEASE NOTE: The stories have now been removed from my blog and published on Amazon for Kindle readers.
CURRENTLY AVAILABLE ARE ON KINDLE ARE: No Time For Mourning - A day in the life of Battle Of Britain Squadron.
Flight of the Rusty Bucket - A bomber crew take on a dangerous raid over Germany.
The Will To Survive - The desperate struggle for survival on a contaminated Earth in 2050.
Rescue Mission. A sequel to The Will To Survive. Our hero, along with two companions, undertakes a dangerous rescue mission.
Escape from the Taliban - An SAS team are captured and must escape a vicious Taliban leader.
The Sinking of the Rodney Star - The desperate days of WW2 Atlantic convoys.
Deadly Duel - The massacre of American troops in the Ardenne
Strike By Night - Commando raid just after D-Day 1944
Code-name Falcon - A WW2 French resistance story
Hell's Valley - The continuing battle against the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Lifeboat - The crew of a sunken WW2 convoy vessel fight to survive the merciless Atlantic ocean.
A Refugee's Story - The desperate journey of hope for a Somalian refugee.
Secret of the Golden Sphinx - Murder and intrigue in Ancient Egypt.
Alien City - Two young people stumble upon a secret alien city.
They cost only $0.99 or equivalent so feel free to browse on the Kindle Store webpage.
Roy.

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